Can he suffer music?

A lot of languages have gendered nouns and articles. For an English speaker, this is difficult. Gender is only relevant to your doctor and the person you’re sleeping with. Why does a book need to have a gender? Why does a table need gender?

French has made me familiar with the concept at least. Un livre is a male book. Une fleur is a female flower. Sometimes the e on the end of the word gives a hint (ordinateur is male, basse is female), but as you can see from the book and flower example, that’s not really reliable at all. All you can do is memorize as many pronouns as possible and hope for the best. French and Spanish speakers will recognize me as a foreigner no matter how fluent I get, because I’ll never stop mixing up the genders. It’s a mistake not even a child would make in their native language.

Now we come to Danish. They have the “common gender” and the “neuter gender”. Not only does that not make sense, it makes me wonder exactly what Danes do in bed.

Here’s another fun one.

“Kan han lide musik?”

Does he like music? Or rather “Can he like music?” But you could also translate it as “Can he suffer music?” because “like” is the same word as “suffer”. This might be another key to the Danish psyche. They don’t like things, they’re simply willing to suffer them. When the men in white with clipboards come around asking Danes if they like their lives, they all say yes even if they’re suffering. I assume this is how they earned the title of “Happiest Nation on Earth” for 50 years running even though they never get to pillage anymore.